Interview with Kevin Mentz of Daedalic
Entertainment, who designed the recent “Memoria”and
is now designing the new game “Devil’s Men”

by Peter Rootham-Smith

GB: How did
you get into making games?

KM: I
wanted to make games since I was six years old. Back then I dreamt
of becoming a background artist for Sierra-style graphic adventures
and I was absolutely certain that all I needed was my father to buy
me a scanner and I could jump right into full-scale production of my
first game. Things weren’t
that easy, of course. After school I studied creative writing and
film and worked on some RPG-Maker games in my spare time. It did not
occur to me that I might end up living my childhood dream one day
–
that is, until I saw that Daedalic was looking for game design
interns and all my old ambitions suddenly resurfaced.

GB: What
kind of games do you like playing yourself?

KM: I like
games with strong narratives, and with differing approaches to
story-telling. I like Adventure games, I like role-playing games, I
also like Bioshock Infinite which is a first-person shooter but with
an interesting premise. Basically I like interesting settings and
interesting stories, and it helps if the gameplay is very engaging!

GB: What
influences your designing?

KM:
“The Devil’s Men” game was especially influenced by two works. One
was “Coraline” by Neil Gaiman, I read that and liked the atmosphere.
I wanted to make a game in a similar British setting. The other one
is “The Prestige” by Christopher Nolan, a movie about two rival
magicians in the nineteenth century. I liked the feel, and how
friendship turned into something darker through the course of the
story as they got into conflict. Those were the two most important
influences. Other influences include Philip Pullman’s “His Dark
Materials” trilogy, as well as his “Sally
Lockhart”
crime mysteries.

GB: Do you
ever wish for a 9 to 5 job?

KM: For me
it is a 9 to 5 job, but sometimes I have to stay longer. Usually I
keep it between those times. It’s a very great privilege to write my
own stories, and develop them into games. So no, I don’t want a
different job.

GB: That’s
interesting - many game developers work all the hours going.

KM: There
are times when you have to work more, but we’re getting better and
better to stay within reasonable working hours.

GB: Where do
you work?

KM:
There were times when I preferred writing in quiet from home. But
nowadays I and Matt Kempke have moved into what we call “The
Writing Room”
of Daedalic. There we can work in peace, discuss ideas for our
games, and are still easily addressable by our team (if they need
feedback or briefings). The hardest part is always switching between
creative writing and team communication, but currently I think we
found a good balance to get things done on both levels.

GB: How are
games planned and managed at Daedalic?

KM: We have
very small teams. So there is a lot of self-organisation. Everyone
has to take a good amount of responsibility for what they do.

GB: Who do
you make games for? Yourself?

KM: They are
not only for me, of course, but I enjoy making the kind of games I
myself would love to play. The sad thing is that you will never play
your own games without knowing every little detail beforehand. There
are no surprises anymore. I guess, you need to forget a lot about
the production, before you can even start experiencing the game the
way others hopefully do.

GB: What
excites you about “The Devil’s Men”, the game you’re working on?

KM: It’s
the characters, it’s a lot about the characters, a lot about the
relationships between the characters. That’s the thing that’s the
most fun, that you as a player get to influence those relationships.
In my previous game (“Memoria”) there was a lot of spectacle, a lot
of epicness in there. So there were points where the characters
weren’t that important, the relationships did not have enough space
to develop as much as I wanted them to. For “The Devil’s
Men” I invested a lot of time into character relationships and
character development, and I really enjoyed doing that.

GB: Do you
work on more than one game at the same time?

KM: No, I
only work on one game. Otherwise I would probably go mad.

GB: What are
the important features of a game?

KM: The
beauty about games is that it’s a fusion of all arts. If the music
is right then the graphics look better. If you don’t have any music
then the graphics look slightly less good. You have music, you have
gameplay, you have story, you have text, all these things come
together to create one thing and they are mostly all equal. Often
people consider the visuals very important first, then after that
the content and entire feel.

GB: How
important is contact with Adventure game fans?

KM: That is
of course very important. Nowadays we have the Internet and I get a
lot of feedback from players. I read actively, I research what
people have said about games I worked on so I can improve. So I know
what worked and what didn’t work. It’s a great opportunity to
improve your own work.

GB: Is now a
good or bad time to be making games?

KM: I don’t
think it’s worse or better than before; it’s a very exciting time
right now. There’s the indie scene, and especially there are a lot
of people considering how story-telling can work with games. So
right now we’re making huge steps, and things are getting very
experimental and very interesting. But we also have enough
experience to build on, to make the games better and better.

GB: Would
you recommend making games as a career?

KM: That’s a
hard question - depends on the person. I was very lucky to get into
the games industry. It’s not easy and it’s also a lot of work and
very stressful. It’s not as glamorous as you may think at first.
It’s really a lot of work and struggling.

GB: Can
games say things?

KM: Of
course. Like a movie is able to say important things, or a book can
have a moral or theme that is discussed, you can also discuss things
through the things the player has to do, through the gameplay. So I
think this is very important to not only be entertaining but to add
a certain thematical depth to your games. To make it more meaningful
for the player in the long run.

GB: Can
games be Art?

KM: Yes.

GB: Will you
still be making games in ten years time?

KM:
Hopefully!

GB: Were you
involved with the “Chains of Satinav” game?

KM: I
did a bit of proof-reading, and I rewrote some of the dialogues. It
wasn’t
until “Memoria” that I got fully invested into production of a
“Dark
Eye”
game.

GB: Was it
difficult to do the sequel to “Chains of Satinav”?

KM: It was
difficult, but it was also easy if you had some kind of pattern that
you could build upon. So one of the huge challenges, and also the
biggest joys in developing the game, was to figure out how I could
use everything that was established in “Chains of Satinav” and make
something new with it. So I had all those puzzle pieces in front of
me, and I had to build a new story that was entirely my own, but
still worked as a sequel. But also worked as a game that you could
play for itself, so you didn’t have to play “Chains of Satinav”. I
like to have a lot of things fixed before I start working on a
project, rather than just having a blank sheet of paper and having
to make up everything.

GB: Was it
difficult to come up with the ending to “Memoria”?

KM:
Basically I had a rough idea for the ending. That is, I knew where
everything was going to move to, but for quite some time it was all
very vague. It was an OK ending with a nice little twist, but
nothing more. So, I was thinking about this for weeks and weeks. One
day I just sat around relaxing when it struck me. Suddenly
everything fell into place.

GB: It does
end unhappily perhaps for most of the characters.

KM: It
depends on how you interpret it. For example, the Nuri / Geron
ending gave you a choice, so you could influence the ending, and
decide what you thought would be the right thing to do. In that case
it is up to you, really.

GB:
“Memoria” had a nice elegiac feel to it. Would there ever be a
sequel?

KM: I
have an idea for a sequel, and I made sure to establish enough in
“Memoria”
to motivate in a sequel. But for now there are no plans to go into
production with it. But that doesn’t
mean that it will never happen. I for my part would love to work on
another “Dark
Eye”
game.

GB: Daedalic
have done at least 4 games in the Dark Eye universe.

KM: A lot of
people who work at Daedalic used to play the Dark Eye pen and paper
game. First there was “Chains of Satinav”, then we did
“Blackguards”. And afterwards it was sequels. So we have two Dark
Eye games, and decided to make sequels (Blackguards 2 and Memoria),
so just building on that.

GB:
Aventuria (the Dark Eye world) is a mirror of our own world in some
ways.

KM: The
story is focusing on our relationship to the past, to memories and
history. And that’s something which is not only apparent in our
culture, but all kinds of cultures. As we are humans, as we are
people, we make experiences and we define ourselves by what we
experience, by what our memories mean to us. That was the theme that
is very relevant for each one of us, that was the focus of the
story.

GB: So the
name of the game “Memoria” reflects the theme.

KM: Yes, it
does. On multiple levels.

GB: Moving
on to “The Devil’s Men” you stressed the choices the player will
have, which is something “Dreamfall Chapters” is also allowing.
There the choices won’t affect the ending you reach, but will affect
which other characters you reach it with.

KM:
Compared to “Memoria”
it’s the complete opposite with “The Devil’s Men”. In most other
Daedalic games you have one linear path, then a decision at the end.
You have all these decisions, and paths, then one ending. I found
different endings always a bit annoying. Mostly because they lose
their meaning once the player just makes a save game before deciding
and then just clicks through all the possible endings without the
feeling of having made an investment in one particular ending. Or,
if you didn’t
design the decision well, you may end up with two endings that are
not equally powerful, with one ending being better than the others.
If the players then ends up with the less satisfying ending, it is
their right to feel cheated or disappointed. Everyone always wants
to experience the best possible ending. So, “The
Devil’s
Men”
will have different paths leading to one specific ending. And there
will only be that one ending, so you can fully enjoy the finale as
it was meant to be without feeling like missing out on something.